This is slightly off-topic, but is interesting nonetheless. Jeff Jarvis posted the text of his prepared opening statement from an upcoming debate: the motion at issue: “Google violates its ‘don’t be evil’ motto. Not sure where exactly I stand, but Jeff (against the motion) is a really smart guy (as is Harry Lewis on the opposite side) and I think he raises some good points:

Leavening the impression of - or fear of - evil is Google’s virtue. Google does good. Our world is a better place because of Google. Consider:

* Google has opened up the world’s digital knowledge to everyone. We can answer any question, satisfy any curiosity, fix any error of fact in the blink of an eye. I wanted to know just how fast that is, so I asked Google how fast an eye blinks and in .3 seconds it told me that a blink takes .3 seconds.

* Google respects the wisdom of the crowd - that is the essence of the PageRank that determines which search results are most relevant. Google also enables us to recapture our wisdom, as it does with its analysis of flu trends based on our searches for related words.

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